Bru

The Bru, or Bruu, whose name means people living in the woods, are a Katuic-speaking Mon-Khmer people scattered along the Annamite Range and the middle Mekong, in southern Laos, north-eastern Thailand and central Vietnam. In Laos their villages cluster around Savannakhet and Thakhek, the lands they occupy in 1337, and the Vietnamese know the easternmost branch as the Van Kieu. Researchers trace their ancestors to the Mon-Khmer population under Angkor's rule from the 800s to the 1200s, before Thai-speaking polities rose along the Mekong.

Bru society is patriarchal, built on swidden rice, hunting and fishing, and its people venerate ancestors, rice and fire spirits; western communities also adopted Theravada Buddhism while keeping older animist rites.